


Stockholm Syndrome

by majorkimblee



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, and colors, and law student levi, and some courtroom drama, and time, graphic in later chapters, jean has stockholm syndrome, lawyer erwin, marco is a mess of emotions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-18 13:39:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3571667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/majorkimblee/pseuds/majorkimblee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been 731 days 12 hours and 15 minutes since Marco had last seen Jean. The morning of August 27th, 2010 began just like any other. Marco walked Jean to the second day of their senior year of high school and was counting down the minutes till he could walk home with him again that afternoon. But Jean stayed after school. He told Marco not to wait up for him. And on August 27th, 2010 at 3:19pm Marco saw Jean for what he would eventually think was his last time. </p><p>Jean never made it home that day and, four days later, was officially announced missing.</p><p>It wasn’t until 731 days 19 hours and 23 minutes after his last moment with him, that Marco learned that Jean was alive. Jean had been kidnapped. And Jean had been found. Only, what Marco didn’t know is that Jean didn’t want to leave his captor. Jean wanted to stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Too White

**Author's Note:**

> it was a not so sunshine yellow kind of day

3:34 in the morning was not what you would consider a reasonable hour to be painting your bedroom walls, but I would say that it’s actually quite a calming experience.

It was the second time in the past two years that I had decided it was time for a change. That grey was no longer the color I thought it was seven months ago. Or if it was really even a color at all…

I remember thinking that grey would match pretty much anything and that it would cover up the old sunshine yellow walls nicely. (What was I thinking when I picked up a can the color of dog piss and decided to actually smear it all over my walls all those years ago?) I felt like grey worked at the time. It was unemotional, detached, and just downright impartial to the world moving on around it. And that right there pretty much summed up the last year, for my walls and for me.

I was unemotional, detached, and, well for lack of a better vocabulary, didn’t give two shits about anything.

But this year would be different. It was time I finally at least tried to bring myself into a brighter world. Into a world where I at least cared a little. A world that maybe had just  _a little bit_ of sunshine yellow.

This time I was going with something even more simple than grey. Something that wasn’t in your face, something that was just there, something that I wouldn’t notice that much if I dropped it on my cream colored carpets. Something white.

White. Yea, I know. It’s pretty boring. Not as boring as grey maybe, but still boring. But I just remember reading somewhere that white can encourage us to clear away clutter and obstacles and that it enables fresh beginnings. And that’s exactly what I needed to make this year. A fresh beginning. (I also remember reading it was the color of mourning in, like, four different cultures and several different time periods, but hey. This is me mourning the old me of the last year, _not_ anything, or anyone, else.)

I sat on the floor of my room, tongue between my teeth, eyebrows furrowed as I tried to immaculately paint near the bottom of the trim, trying not to get any paint on the carpet. Yea, I said I chose a color that I wouldn’t freak out about if it landed on the floor, but does that mean I want it there? No. Otherwise I would just paint the carpet, which probably wouldn’t go over well.

I tried, I really did, but my focus was elsewhere. Every now and then I would glance over to the clock sitting up on my nightstand. 3:35am.

731 days, 12 hours, and 16 minutes.

No, stop it, Marco. You told yourself you were going to stop this starting this year. You’re going to make yourself go crazy. Well, crazier. We passed crazy back when you decided to frantically go to the nearest appliance and home goods store at 9:57 at night just so you could buy grey paint to paint over the yellow walls that were making you sick. And the fact that you even know it was at 9:57 at night says enough. I need to stop with the time thing.

But how could I? How could I stop noticing the minutes, days, _years_ , yes plural years now, that have passed since I last saw his face. Since I last saw those golden eyes, that ashy hair, that grumpy smile. My stomach churned.

I had to notice the time, it was my countdown, well more like count up, but it was what gave me hope. It’s what I did so I could hopefully one day say, “I haven’t seen you in said amount of days, hours, and minutes.” And then hold him close and kiss him.

That’s what I was counting for. And today’s count marked the two year anniversary since I last saw him. Since he went…

“Marco, are you still up?”

Great.

The door to my room pushed open slowly, and my mom peaked her head around. The deep, dark circles under her eyes and the way they were only half there told me that she couldn’t sleep. Not for the same reason I wasn’t in bed, but not sleeping nonetheless.

“Marco, it’s going on four in the morning. You have work tomorrow.”  She whispered.

“So do you…” I mumbled, hoping that she wouldn’t hear the annoyance in my voice.

She just stared at me with her arms crossed in the doorway. Her pale nightshirt was hanging loose on her body and she just kept her eyes locked deep on my face. She knew. And I was hoping she wouldn’t say anything. I was hoping that she would just give me the decency to mope around in my half grey half white room all by myself and --

“It’s the anniversary.” Her voice even quieter than it was before.

I didn’t respond. My mind was elsewhere. My hand was moving the paint brush back and forth against the trim, but I wasn’t painting anything. This happened to me every once in a while. My world would stop, time would freeze. It seemed like 731 days, 12 hours, and 16 minutes would last forever.

I thought of his hands. How his palms were rough and how they felt like sandpaper against my fingertips. How his fingers were so soft and how the backside of his hand would drip down my cheeks. How I just couldn’t stop imagining what happened to those hands. What happened to his face, his arms, his back, oh god his back. He always had the most beautiful back. The way his spine ran deep into pale skin and how -- Stop.

I was brought back into reality by the sound of my door closing abruptly. My mother was no longer standing where she stood just moments ago. I looked up at the clock.

731 days, 12 hours, and 19 minutes.

She stood there for three minutes while I moved a paintbrush back in forth in silence. Three minutes I spent in a better place. Somewhere I hoped he was now.

Not a better place as in, well, you know. But a better place somewhere on this Earth. Somewhere where I could find him soon. Even though, that’s not what a lot of people think, but it’s what I chose to believe. It’s more of what gives me hope.

A lot of people think he’s gone. Forever. The theories drifted in the air all senior year. The most common being that he was killed. That whether it was on purpose, or on accident, someone killed him, hid the body deep in the some lake, and left it there to rot out. Just the thought made my skin turn whiter than the walls.

Then there was the lot who believed he ran away. Everyone knew he was a grumpy kid, not as happy as he could have been in his life, but his bad attitude and constant need to rebel led him to say ‘screw it all’, take what money he had saved, bought a plane ticket, and started a new life in some tropical paradise. Although, I knew that couldn’t be, since he hated warm weather, but that didn’t rule out that he could have flown off to Russia or something.

Then there were the ridiculous theories that people just threw around as if the situation was just some kind of joke.

“He was abducted by aliens!”

“No, he obviously was an alien himself and just had to return back to the mother planet.”

“You guys are all so stupid, he secretly was a wizard and just apparated back to Hogwarts.”

“How about we not make up stupid theories and actually focus on finding him?”

That last one was me.

I was asked all the time, but I have no theory. I’ve thought about them all, maybe not the wizard one, but the alien thing did cross my mind. I was desperate for an answer. But then I realized at 154 days, 2 hours, and 12 minutes, I wasn’t going to get one. Don’t ask how I remember that.

Search parties looked for weeks, his family looked for months, I’ve been looking for 731 days, 12 hours and… I think you get the point.

As much as I hated to admit it, my mom was right. I needed to get some sleep if I wanted to at least try to look alive at work tomorrow.

I packed up the painting supplies and threw them into the empty corner of my room. I didn’t even bother to pick up the covers of my bed. I fell down flat on top and wrapped my arms around the pillow, burying my face deep into the soft fabric.

By 731 days, 13 hours, and 2 minutes I was asleep and my pillow looked like it had been left out in the rain.

-

The August heat pushed up against the corners of my small midwestern hometown that morning. It was obvious that summer was just trying to get a couple more good breaths in before finally giving up and letting fall take over for awhile.

I stood against the back alley wall of good ol’ “Zoe’s” restaurant and just let the sun burn more freckles into my skin. I didn’t want my break to end. I just wanted to stand out here for an eternity and hope the sun would melt me down. I wanted to be nothing more than a sticky pile of goop roasting on the pavement. I assumed that piles of goop didn’t have to feel anything other than the shoes of the unfortunate people who stepped in them. It was weird. I’ve had a lot of feelings the past two years and getting stepped on by dirty shoes wasn’t one of them until today.

I could use a good foot to the face.

I didn’t always wish for pain. There was a long time where I didn’t feel anything. Where I didn’t get out of bed. Didn’t eat. Didn’t sleep (even though I still don’t do much of that). Didn’t go to school. Didn’t do _anything_. The only doing I was doing was sitting up in bed and just staring into grey walls that for some reason, looked an awful lot like me.

When I first heard the news that he had gone missing, I felt sick. For the first couple months that’s all I felt. My stomach was at a constant state of uneasiness. I was anxious and ill and sad and always moving. I couldn’t stop moving for the first couple months. I wasn’t able to stand still, even for a minute. And that’s no exaggeration. Trust me, I know time.

I would pace back and forth when I was supposed to be standing still and would tap my feet whenever I would sit down. I was fidgety and vulnerable and jumped at the slightest touch. I was on the move. When the first search parties were sent out in early September, I went along with them. I searched even when they weren’t. Even when the skies would turn from a soft orange to inky black. I was there. Looking, but never finding.

Then when the search parties stopped and his parents seemed to be giving up, giving up on their only child, the love of their life, that’s when I started losing hope. Those were the days where I felt nothing. I felt like crawling under a rock, digging myself a grave and then just sitting in it, jumping off a cliff and hoping the falling feeling would never end. I couldn’t think straight and that’s when things got really bad. When I couldn’t go to sleep because the clock kept ticking. Because time was passing and he wasn’t there next to me. He wasn’t anywhere near me, as far as I knew.

And now here I was, two years later, with what seemed like a never-ending rollercoaster of feelings and the only thing I wanted to feel like was a sticky, slimy puddle. I was definitely falling off that cliff, but I didn’t keep falling, I feel straight into the deep end of crazy.

I pushed myself off the wall, the back of my shirt sticking to the sweat on my back. I didn’t even bother to tug at my shirt to air it out. This was me thinking it was my first step in becoming a puddle.

I sulked back to the small restaurant and was nearly knocked out by the metal door that came straight for my face. I quickly stepped back.

Holding the handle on the other side was an out of breath looking Sasha. Standing there with her ponytail looking messier than ever and her chest rising up and down. The black apron around her waist looked like it was about to fall down at any moment and she quickly pulled at the strings to tighten it. Her movements all over the place.

“What’s up, Sash?” I tried to sound like I cared why she was looking the way she did in front of me. But it was hard since I just assumed it was going to be for some ridiculous reason, like Connie tried to fit a whole potato in her mouth. Or Hanji was talking about “letting someone go” again and Sasha immediately, always, assumes it’s her.

But what came out of her mouth next was something that made my heart stop.

“It’s him. It’s Jean.” Her voice was wheezy.

I just stared at her. I didn’t know what she meant or what she had seen, or heard, but I couldn’t find the voice in me to ask. I didn’t know if I wanted to know. My first thought was that he was in the restaurant. Just came in and sat down for a cup of coffee and some small talk with the waitress, but I knew that couldn’t be it. If Jean were in town he wouldn’t just meander around like everything was normal. My next thought was that she must have heard something. But not just anything, like his name in a conversation, or in a memory from high school, but she heard news. News about him.

“T-the news… You, you have to come look…” She could hardly speak.

I don’t even remember what I thought at that moment, I don’t think I thought anything at all. I just pushed Sasha out of the way and walked into the noisy kitchen. Everyone else seemed to be going about their business normally, so whatever news it was Sasha thought to come and tell me first. I couldn’t feel my legs. They walked on their own. Quickly into the dining area. I turned the corner so fast I nearly ran into Connie on my way over to the small TV that sat propped up onto the wall in the corner of the restaurant.

I didn’t even notice when I blocked an older woman from viewing what was on the screen, even when she snapped at me to move. I blocked her out completely. I blocked out everything except for the bold headline on the TV.

**LOCAL BOY FOUND AFTER TWO YEARS IN KIDNAPPERS HOME**

It took me awhile to process what it said because my only focus was on the image on the screen. It was a smaller looking white house that sat only streets over from where I lived. I knew it. I knew that house so well. I walked past that house every single day on my way to work, school, the store. That house sat in the middle of my commute to almost everywhere. Jean was there. He had been there all along. He was right under my nose this hold time and I wasn’t even able to sniff him out. How? How could I have not known? But also, how could I have known?

So many questions, so many thoughts, were running through my mind. How did this happen? Who would do this? Why would they do this? What did they do to him? How did they find him? Did he escape? What if he’s looking for his family? Or me? What do I do? Do I leave here, from work, and go try to see him? But there will surely be cop cars all over the area. Not to mention the press will be everywhere. I already had to deal with them once before, when he initially went missing, and I really don’t know if I could deal with them again.

But then it hit me. I took a deep breath. And relaxed just a little. Relaxed more than I had in 731 days, 19 hours, and how many minutes? I didn’t know. I didn’t know! I stopped counting. I stopped counting and that meant that he was alive. He was alive and I could see him again. I could hold him and touch him and love him all over again. I needed to see him.

My head snapped over to where my boss stood. I had to get out of here. I needed to be with him.

“Hanji.” I walked up to her as she was carrying a tray out from the kitchen.

“I’m sorry, Marco, can’t you see I’m a little busy.” She sat down the tray next to the table with the old woman who was snappy with me earlier. “Alright now who had the Sunrise Sampler.”

“Hanji, I need to leave.” I whispered to her as she sat the plate of breakfast food down on the table. “I need to get out of here, it’s Jean.”

She turned to me, curiosity and shock sitting in her eyes. “What do you mean?”

I just pointed to the TV. She squinted and looked up at the screen. Her eyes following the words that ran under the headline. The curiosity soon faded and the shock was all that was left. She looked at me and didn’t have anything to say. She knew what my relationship was with Jean, hell most people knew at this point. She simply nodded and that was my okay to get the hell out of there. I silently thanked her.

-

I nearly ripped my bike out of the lock once I was outside and started pedaling towards the street that was all too familiar to me. I knew it would take me exactly seven minutes to bike there at normal speed, but I was not going close to normal speed. Call me the next Lance Armstrong because I could win the Tour de France easily at this speed. And the only steroid I was one was pure emotional longing to see his face. Him. He was what was pushing me to get there as soon as possible.

I rounded the corner onto the next street, closer to where the house was located, and could already see the news vans. There had to be at least seven of them parked along the side of the road, and two more parked up on driveways where street space ran out. People were spilling out of their houses and into the street, all of them walking over to the white house that sat on the corner. There were cop cars everywhere. In the middle of lawns, speckled along the street, sitting right in front of the tired white house.

I threw my bike on the sidewalk as I ran up as close as I could get to the house. The street on which it faced was blocked off and tons of people already stood right at the orange barricades. I made my way through the crowd, up to the front of the action. I looked around at the street that stretched ahead of me.

Cop cars coming and going from the other side, and cops, medics, investigators all walked around outside of the house. Many of them entering and exiting at a time, all looking immersed in their jobs.

“When will you bring the boy out?” A blonde reporter standing next to me asked one of the cops. She had her pen and pad in hand, ready to record every bit of the action that went down. She was nearly choking on her excitement. All for a story. Sickening.

“Ma’m we’re going to be bringing him out here shortly, but we ask that you all keep quiet when he does. Don’t ask questions, please.” The cop stated.

“Oh of course, officer.” She gave him a scheming grin, scribbling something down on her notepad.

At that point I couldn’t resist. I got the cops attention and asked him the only question that was on my mind.

“Is he okay?” My heart was in my throat again.

I just knew by the way he hesitated it wasn’t good. He took a deep breath and shook his head, stuck his hands on his waist and just said, “He’ll live, kid. That’s all that matters.”

I couldn’t breath. From that point on my eyes just stayed focused on the open door of the house.

I never really looked much at that house before. It was just like any other house before today. You never thought anything of it. It was just another home that I assumed was probably lived in by some average suburban family who liked to fix up old houses and put modern art in the stairway.

It wasn’t until today that I took it all in. It was a two-story with a large porch out front. The house use to be a bit run down, until a new family moved in a couple years ago. They painted the rickety old thing a bright white. A white so white that on summer days like these you felt like you didn’t want to take off your sunglasses looking at it. It sat there, a little white house in the middle of suburbia getting burned by the heat. I had the sudden urge to run home and throw out all the white paint cans I still had cluttered around my room.

Looks like I would be making another trip to the home goods store. What was I thinking with white?

“Sir, you ready?” Another cop yelled out from the porch.

The cop I had been talking to looked up at him and gave him a simple nod.

The whole crowd took in a breath. The muttering stopped, the reporter next to me was nearly falling out of her heels. Everyone was waiting for what they knew was about to come. I bit the inside of my cheeks. I couldn’t breath. I could feel my vision going blurry; my head was about to explode. How would he look? Would he be so skinny he could barely walk? Was he tortured like so many others who had been kidnapped before him? I saw the stories on the news. I knew what happened. And now this was his story. This was real. This was what had happened. I couldn’t even blink.

Then, out of the doorway, came three figures. Two cops stood on either side of him. Holding a blanket up in front of his face, to protect him from the media, I thought. The crowd was still holding their breath.

He walked slowly down the steps and as soon as his feet hit the sidewalk it was an eruption of voices. Reporters, neighbors, passersby were all yelling at him, asking him questions, wanting to know what happened. They were nearly foaming out the mouth to get some idea of what went on inside that house. Their voices were all drowned out when I caught a glimpse of his face as he walked to the nearest cop car.

He looked thinner, but not extremely so. He was wearing a black hoodie, that was definitely not his, on top of grey sweat pants, that I also realized weren’t his. My eyes trailed down to his feet where I noticed the familiar converse sneakers. Familiar. It really was him.

“Jean…” I murmured. And then all at once, it hit me.

The tears began falling down my face, and I was smiling. I was actually smiling. I was smiling for the first time since that last moment I saw him exactly two years ago. I screamed his name. I let it escape my lips. It felt the same way it had back then. Jean. Jean. _Jean_. It was really Jean. His hair, his eyes, his everything. “Jean!” I couldn’t stop. I don’t know if I was actually trying to get his attention or was just so happy that I could finally taste his name on my lips again.

If I was trying to get his attention it worked. His eyes locked onto mine for only a second, but the look on his face it was so, so --

disgusted?

At me?

My smile faded as he scowled. His eyes were fierce, piercing my entire being as I stood, shocked, behind the barricade. Then he spoke. His voice was angry, concerned. “Where’s Eren?! Is he okay? I need him!” He screamed at the cop. “What have you all done with him?”

Remember that puddle I was talking about earlier? Yea. It’s safe to say that there and then I would have been completely content with drowning in myself on that hot summer tar beneath my feet. Jean acted like didn’t want me. He didn’t want to look at me. He didn’t want to be with me. He wanted to be with someone named Eren. Not me. Eren.

“That sicko is gonna be locked behind bars for a long ass time, kid.” One of the cops said as he pushed Jean into the car. “That’s what he gets. And it’s what he deserves.”

The last thing I heard before the car door shut was Jean screaming no. Jean was screaming. Because his kidnapper was going to jail. His kidnapper. Jail. No. Jean. Screaming. Kidnapper. What.

He wanted to stay with his kidnapper. He wanted him to be okay.

I looked over to the reporter standing next to me, laughing to herself. “Oh, man.” she chuckled. “This is going to be my best story yet.”


	2. Pink Lemonade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> baby melt me down with pink lemonade and the summer sun

Ask almost anyone I dare you. Ask them what color they associate with love and I guarantee almost all, if not all, will say red.

And not just any color red, but that bright newly painted fire hydrant red that’s too in your face. It’s the lipstick on some big-shot CEO’s brand new secretary, the bouquet of fresh flowers that blooms around the outsides of middle class suburban homes, the ribbons in her hair on the Fourth of July.

It’s the feeling you get when his hands first lay you down and press deep into your skin, the hot anger that burns your face when your mom tells you you’re not allowed to leave the house on a Saturday night, the beating of your heart when you hook yourself into the seat of an old, rickety roller coaster.

That’s the color red, but it’s not love. That’s lust, anger, pain, excitement. But it sure as hell isn’t love.

If you were to ask me what color I think represents love, I would tell you that it depends. It depends on if you’re just falling in love, deep in love, falling out of love, and all the ups and downs that come with it.

I’d tell you that falling in love feels like a nice pink lemonade. It’s all sweet and sticky and goes great with hot summer days that melt into damp summer nights. That’s what falling in love feels like. You sip it up so quick that it leaves you feeling lightheaded and weak to the touch. But it’s so warm and you can’t help but just smile at everything all the time. You say hi to people you wouldn’t have otherwise said hi too. You have that extra bounce in your step and that little sparkle in your eye. It’s so sweet that too much of it too fast will give you cavities and that tall glass of pink lemonade you were so thirsty for runs out too soon.

That’s the color of falling in love.

You know those sunsets that bleed out into such a deep orange painted across the sky? The kind that you have to pull your phone our for and snapchat a picture of how beautiful the sky looks tonight in your crummy ass town just to show your friends (who have already probably taken their own picture)? That’s the color of being deep in love. It’s that sunset orange that comforts you on a warm evening. It’s when you look up at the sky in awe, taking a deep breath and can’t help but just letting out a smile because when you see that color smeared into the sky you realize this world is truly beautiful. That sunset is the type of orange that wraps around your body and holds you tight, telling you everything is going to be okay. Being in love is looking into his eyes and seeing nothing but the beauty of that orange sunset.

But everyone knows all sunsets must take their last breath before the darkness of the night smears itself in every corner of the sky.

I would tell you that falling out of love is the darkness of the night, but I don’t believe that it is. It’s too quick, too sudden for it to be drawn out into the long hours leading into dawn. Falling out of love has no color. It’s void of any life. There’s no light, no dark, no color at all. The only thing that remains is the sticky taste of pink lemonade dried to your lips and sunsets that set without a snapchat telling the world how pretty the sky looks tonight. That’s the color of falling out of love.

But that’s what only one side feels like. When you’re on the side of still being in love, while someone is falling out of love with you, you’re still watching the last minutes of that sunset. While he who still loved you has already walked into the night. You feel your heart sink to the pit of your soul as it withers up into the darkness.

Yea. Falling out of love isn’t the dark colors of the night, but being the one still left in love is.

-

The house was too quiet for a Saturday evening. Usually my stepdad would have some of his friends over and they’d all make a mess of the living room while they watched some stupid sports game on TV. Tonight was different though. I didn’t hear any tough laughter, or crunching of beer cans, I didn’t even hear the TV. There was silence and I understood why.

It had been like this for the past two weeks. Even since Jean had been found no one in my household said a word to me. They even went to the length of keeping the TV off at all hours the day, and if it was turned on for some reason, all news channels were avoided. My mom knew better. She saw the look on my face when I slammed the front door shut and headed to my room (now better known as the small square space that had become my own personal hell hole in these last two weeks).

I called off work. Hanji understood. I didn’t want to eat, I didn’t want to sleep, the only thing I did want to do was burn all the white paint off my walls. Although, I knew my mom wouldn’t be too happy if I one night decided to light a match and burn the whole house down, just because of those half white half grey walls, so I resorted to just buying more paint to cover it up.

The old white paint cans were thrown hard into the dumpster and replaced with new brown ones. I still cannot believe I painted my room brown. And not like a good brown either, I mean like a straight up shit color brown.

That was life. A big pile of brown. What else would I have painted them? Every other color seemed too, well, colorful to be my new walls. Even grey somehow had developed a complex personality with an annoying sense of humor since I last looked at it.

Now here I was, face down on my bed breathing into the pillow. My mind was blank; there was nothing to think about. And looking around at the mess I had made in my room made me want to sink down into my bed even more. Living in your room, only taking the occasional trip into the bathroom and the even more rare trip into the kitchen was my idea of what a good day looked like now.

And I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably sitting there wondering why the hell I’m moping around my house when my boyfriend was just recently found after two years missing and why I’m not with him. You’re also probably wondering why I’ve decided that the best way to deal with this is to shut myself off from the rest of humanity. I have good answers, I swear. But I guess first I’ll give you a little bit of the backstory…

 

-

When I was in fourth grade I had a pet turtle. His name was Shelley. I originally thought that Shelley was a girl until his first vet visit. The veterinarian told me that Shelley was actually a he and not a she, but at that point I had already had Shelley for about two months, and he had grown accustomed to having a girl’s name. At least, I like to think he did. Anyway, beside the point, Shelley went everywhere with me.

I would take Shelley to the grocery store with my mom, I would let him ride in the cup holder of the cart while I ran around shoving sugary cereals into the basket while my mom gave me disapproving looks. Shelley also loved to come with me to the mall, McDonald’s, and of course, school.

Whenever I would bring Shelley to school I had to make sure to hide him in the cubby of my desk. There was no rule specifying that pet turtles were not allowed on school grounds, but something told me that my teacher would agree that a random turtle moving slowly around on a student's desk was not the best learning environment. So I kept Shelley a secret.

But soon enough, some of the other kids found out about Shelley and would come running up to me at recess asking to play with him. Now, if you know anything about me, it’s that I can be a very nice person. Almost. . . too nice.

I couldn’t say no to the other kids, so I would hand over Shelley for a little bit on the playground. They wouldn’t really do anything with him, except hold him in their sticky, marker-covered fourth grade hands, but it would still make me uneasy.

One day, I gave Shelley over to a good friend of mine, Thomas. I’d been friends with Thomas since the first grade, so I trusted him. Those cookie break friendships of grade school were deep and taken very seriously, so when he asked, “Marco, can I take Shelley to the sandbox and let him walk around in it?” I couldn’t say no.

I was about to follow Thomas over to the sandbox, when I was all of the sudden hounded by a crowd of my other classmates asking me why _they_ weren’t allowed to take Shelley to the sandbox. I was held up for a few minutes by a bombardment of questions about how I could let Thomas do such a thing and not them when it was actually Thomas himself who broke the noise of the crowd.

“Marco!” He came running up to me. I couldn’t help but notice Shelley was not in his hands.

“Where’s Shelley?” I asked concerned.

“You have to come see this!” His voice was excited. “I built Shelley a sandcastle and he’s playing in it.”

Me, and a group of about ten more fourth graders, followed Thomas over to the sandbox that sat in the far corner of the playground. When we got there, I noticed Thomas had built a small, crumbling, sandcastle out of the little plastic turret molds that sat in the box. But there was no Shelley in the sandcastle.

“Thomas…” My chest hurt. “Where’s Shelley?” I hoped this was all just some stupid prank on me by my classmates. That’s why they had stopped me back when he left with Shelley. This was surely some kind of prank. Shelley was going to pop out of the sand at any moment and put on an intricate dance number or something. Right?

But Thomas just started shaking his big, stupid, blonde head.

“I’m sorry, Marco.” He whispered as his flicked his eyes around the sandbox, trying to look for Shelley. “Shelley was here when I left. I don’t know where he went…”

I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. Memories of Shelley and I from early that day started to flash through my mind. _Me and Shelley getting up for school. Me sneaking him into the car so my mom wouldn’t see. Me and Shelley eating snacks together._ My stomach hurt.

My thoughts were cut off my the sudden bell telling us that recess was over. A group of classmates just mumbled their apologies to me and trickled back into the school as I just stood there, staring in the empty sandbox.

I should have known that none of them would help me look for Shelley. Just minutes ago they were all here yelling at me about how I should trust them to look after Shelley, yet not a single one of them stayed to help me look.

I nearly turned the sandbox inside out looking for that damn turtle, but no matter how hard I looked, no matter how much sand I sifted through, I couldn’t find Shelley. That’s when the tears started to flow. I palmed my eyes and just sat there, knees buried deep into the sand.

“Do you need help finding your turtle?” A voice asked from behind me.

I quickly turned around and looked straight into the face of a small boy with ashy hair and bright golden eyes. I recognized him from one of the other fourth grade classes (they must have had recess after my class that day). He sat behind me in the sandbox, burying his hands in the sand, waiting for my response.

I rubbed my wet eyes and just nodded at him. He nodded back and helped me sift through the sandbox for what seemed like hours (it was really only fifteen minutes, since that’s when he was called back in for class, but fifteen minutes is long for a ten year old).

Before he ran over to lineup with his class, he stood up and gave me a toothy smile. “My name’s Jean and I hope you find your turtle.” He then turned on his heels and ran away.

And that was the start of something small that, one day, would burst into something so much bigger.

Shelley was found by the next class that came out for recess. A girl said she saw a turtle waddling over towards the swing-set when she picked it up and quickly ran over to show her teacher. Apparently she knew a boy in one of the other classes had a turtle and, at the end of the school day, announced over the speakers that a turtle had been found on the playground and that if it belonged to anyone they could come and pick it up in her classroom after the final bell.

I went home with a wide grin on my face that day. Not only because I had Shelley sitting in the palm of my hand, but because I had also just made a new ashy haired, grumpy faced friend.

From that day on, Jean and I would always meet up in the cafeteria for lunch. I would let him feed Shelley and he would tell me stories about how when he would go to Florida to visit his grandparents he would see turtles walking on the beach that were twice Shelley’s size. I didn’t believe him until seventh grade when we learned that sea turtles will lay their eggs on beaches along the Florida coast. He just gave me a nudge during class and whispered, “I told ya so.”

It wasn’t until our freshman year of high school when we were pimply faced and could eat a dozen doughnuts and still look like tall twigs when I realized I felt something… different. There were moments when I would look at Jean and just fall deep into his beauty. I would find myself wanting to scoot over a little more on the couch next to him just so our thighs would brush against each other. I found myself drowning deep in a tall glass of pink lemonade.

I knew what was happening. I didn’t try to run away from it. I embraced my feelings with open arms, but still made sure not to make a move. I knew Jean well, but I didn’t know how he would feel if his best friend all of the sudden pulled the whole “if you were a pirate would you want your bird on this shoulder or _this_ shoulder” while we watched Wedding Crashers. I mean it was pretty obvious what was happening when riding bikes around the neighborhood with Jean wasn’t the only kind of riding I wanted to be doing with him. It was love with a full cup of heavy teenage hormonal lust.

So for our freshman and sophomore years that was me. The best friend that was secretly in love with him. It wasn’t until the summer before our junior year when he told me he felt the same way. Well, he didn’t tell me his lips did. Actually, alcohol did.

We were both drunk at our first ever straight-out-of-the-movies high school party when we stumbled into a bathroom together and fell into an empty tub on top of each other. There was a lot of staring into each other’s eyes until he brought my freckled hand up to his mouth and kissed it. Then proceed to pull my chin up so he could smack his lips down on mine. And that’s how Jean and I became boyfriends. And then ten minutes after that I was stroking his back while he groaned with his head in the toilet.

We didn’t tell people. We just didn’t really feel the need. If someone asked we wouldn’t say yes or no, even though they obviously walked away from that conversation knowing what was really up. I told my mom though. I knew she would want to know, and even more, I knew she wouldn’t care. Though… Jean’s parents were different.

He grew up in a pretty conservative household where the f-word, and I don’t mean fuck, was thrown around playfully by his siblings. We dated for over a year before he even thought about telling them. Jean was actually just gathering up the courage to tell his parents right before he went missing.

When his parents started to give up after many months of searching for him I knew I had to keep going a little bit longer. I knew I couldn’t give up. I knew I had to keep looking for him because that’s what he did for me so many years before. He was the only one who got down on his scraped up knees and helped me look for Shelley. So I had to keep looking for him. And as cheesy as it may sound the last words Jean said to me before my countdown started all those years ago were, “Love you, see you soon.” Before I turned my back and walked out those school doors.

Jean’s last words to me were ‘love you’. He left me while he was still in love with him. So I guess that’s why, when I saw him two weeks ago walking out of that white house I expected some romantic reunion with cheering and fireworks and just a lot of leftover love. But that’s not what I got. I got a scowl. I got disgust.

Never did it cross my mind all those years that while he was gone, Jean’s sunset might have set.

-

So there you have it. My answer to all your questions. Why am I being such a wet ball of emotions? Because my boyfriend, or who knows now, maybe he’s my ex, doesn’t love me anymore. And this is how I’m dealing with it. By leaving emptied ice cream containers and wet paintbrushes to dry out all over my room.

Sure he just went through a traumatic experience and all I wanted to do right now was be there for him, but he didn’t want me. He wanted Eren. I still don’t know the details of what went on in that house, since I refuse to watch the news and dwell on the information, but I do know that whatever Eren did to him in there made Jean fall out of love with me and develop some sort of ‘positive’ feelings for him. His captor.

I was just about to burry my face deeper into my pillow when the doorbell rang. I groaned, and not because it was one of the only noises I heard in the past two weeks, but it was because it was a noise I couldn’t avoid. I was home alone on a Saturday night while my parents were out who knows where and I had to get up and answer the door. But maybe I actually didn’t have to...

I could just pretend like I was asleep. I mean, if I actually would have been asleep I wouldn’t have heard the doorbell ring so then I _really_ wouldn’t have answered the door. For good reason. But the bell chimed again and I let out a longer groan, rolling over in my bed. Curiosity got the best of me, because who would be ringing my doorbell at ten o’clock at night, unless it was for some important reason. _Or it could be Jean_. I stopped in my tracks.

I was standing in the middle of my bedroom, lights off, about to reach for the door handle when the thought crossed my mind. What if it was him? What would I do? Would I act normal? But what was normal? Would I embrace him and tell him everything was going to be okay? Or would I wait for him to explain himself before I gave him the time of day? Too many question were swirling around in my mind, per usual, when the bell rang for a third time.

This time I didn’t think twice and just opened up the door of my bedroom. I walked out into the hallway and turned into the foyer of the house. I was slow walking up to the door. Unfortunately our front door doesn’t have windows, so I still has no idea who it could be. I took a deep breath, preparing for what could be the worse, or the best, and creaked open the door.

What met my eyes was not what I had expected to see and, frankly, I was a little disappointed it wasn’t a familiar face. I didn’t even know the two men that stood at the top of my porch looking at me with two very different looks.

One of the men was very tall. Way taller than me. He had sleek blonde hair that feathered down into a sharp undercut. His eyes were bright and he was giving me a genuine smile. But what I couldn’t help but really notice, something more than just his fortunate good looks, was the suit he was wearing. It was probably custom made clinging to his body like it was just meant to be there. Great fit, but still, that wasn’t what struck me about it. It was green. This man was literally wearing an emerald green suit. Like actual emerald green. It was a green suit. I couldn’t help but think that at least he decided to go the white undershirt and black tie, but still _a green suit…_

The man standing next to him was nearly a foot shorter. He was almost unusually short. He stood with a pained look on his face and raised an eyebrow at me when I opened the door. I knew I looked pretty rough (probably should have changed out of the My Chemical Romance tee that I’d been wearing with checkered red and white pajama pants for at least five days straight…), but this man was just not letting me have a bit of decency, as he looked me up and down. And not in the let-me-check-you-out way.

His hair was cut similar to the man with the green suit, but was jet black instead of a heavenly blonde. He, at least, was not wearing a green suit, but rather just a black suit jacket over a white v-neck with a pair of jeans. I took both of them in for a short while and still could not determine who I thought appeared more normal.

Let’s just say neither. Neither appeared to be normal.

“M-may I help you?” My voice sounded foreign to me. I hadn’t spoken to anyone in days.

“Is Marco Bott available?” Green suit guy spoke formally.

“I’m Marco.” I replied.

“Ah, excellent.” His eyes lit up even brighter. He moved to shake my hand. He had a firm handshake, as expected. “My name is Erwin Smith. I’m the prosecutor in the case against Eren Yaeger. This is one of my law students, Levi. He’s helping me out with everything.” Erwin gestured to Levi. The small man looked up at me and quickly gave a curt nod.

Law student. Man, I should have been able to guess that one. He just has that I-know-everything-because-I’m-in-law-school aura about him. Or maybe I’m just bitter because I decided not to go to college while this guy had survived too many years of it.

“I was wondering if you could answer a few questions for us today.” Erwin continued.

“It’s ten at night…” I gave him a questioning look. I didn’t mean to sound rude, but I’m pretty sure that’s how it came off. I don’t know what exactly these two wanted from me, but if it had to do about the case I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to tell them anything useful. Unless their goal was to get out which cereal was Jean’s favorite, or what kind of deodorant he bought. If they needed important information, I really couldn’t see what I could offer them.

“I’m honestly very sorry about that.” Erwin stayed polite. “We were swarmed today and we didn’t get around to interviews until pretty late in the afternoon. We would have called you into the office earlier, but I thought coming to see you in person at your own home would be better.”

Ha. No. I wanted nothing to do with this case. Sorry, Mr. Green Suit, but I have no information for you and even if I did I am so far gone that anything to do with this case is just going to make me sick so please step off my porch and have fun in court. Do the thing you lawyers do and try to win some other way.

That’s what I wish I had said.

“What kind of questions will you be asking me?” Is what I actually said. Damnit, Marco. Step back into the house without them while you still can.

“Well, I’m not gonna act like we don’t know anything about you already, Marco.” _Wonderful_. “We are aware that you and Mr. Kirstein were in a romantic relationship and, more than that, have been best friends for more than seven years. So you testimony could be extremely useful to us in building our case.”

Half of what Erwin said didn’t register with me. My brain stopped working after he said Jean and I were, past tense, in a romantic relationship. I don’t know where he got his information from, or if what he said was just establishing that we were together before he went missing, but it hit me hard. I felt like I had just walked into a landmine that I knew was there and had been trying to avoid for weeks. I didn’t ask, but I was very curious as to who told him that. Wondering hard if it was Jean.

“So will you help us?” He asked smoothly.

I’d be lying to you if I told you I thought about it for a good while. I really didn’t think it over much at all. I let my curiosity get the best of me, again, and gave him a soft, “Sure.” Inviting him and Levi into my home.

-

So far the questions hadn’t been as long and as dreadful as I had expected. It was typical background information they were first trying to get from me. The whole, how old are you, are you originally from here, where did you go to school, what do you parents do, tell us a little about yourself, type stuff. Then, as Erwin sat back in the armchair that sat cozied up in the corner of our living room I could tell he was ready to get into what he had been waiting for.

“Marco…” He said as he relaxed his hands on the armrests of the chair. He sat elegantly with legs crossed. Erwin looked across the coffee table that separated us and stared right into my eyes. “Do you know anything about this case?”

I answered truthfully.

“No.”

Levi sat in the couch across from us, he had been diligently taking notes the entire time, not looking up once, until I answered no to Erwin’s question just then. He spoke for the first time that night.

“You’ve got to be kidding me, right?” He looked to Erwin. “Do we really have to sit here now and explain every detail of this case to this kid because he, for some reason, has decided not to turn on a news station in the past two weeks?” He spoke to Erwin as though I wasn’t even in the room.

“This upsets you, Levi?” I couldn’t help but notice that Erwin kept his voice professional at all times. He was that professor whose lectures you could actually stand just because his voice was so cool and calming. He could be giving a lecture on the history of mathematical equations and their origins and you still wouldn’t feel bored. It was one of those voices that had a deep power that reeled you in and left you wanting more.

Levi rolled his eyes.

“Uh, yea it upsets me. I’m sorry Professor, but we’ve been doing this for hours and it’s almost eleven fucking o’clock and I think I’m going to go crazy if I have to hear the details of this case for the seventh time today.”

Erwin didn’t respond to Levi, instead he looked over to me.

“Marco, would you like to hear the details of this case? We do not need for you to know them for our questioning, but it’s rather just so you know what you are getting yourself into.” He didn’t avert his gaze from me. I sat back in my chair and played with strings on my pants while I thought about it.

Did I really want to hear about what happened to Jean in that house? Was I ready? The answer was obvious. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stomach it if things would get too graphic. So, I looked back at Erwin and told him that I didn’t need to know. He understood.

Then the real questioning began.

“How well did you know Jean?”

_“Very well. He was one of my best friends. We would do almost everything together.”_

“When did you become friends?"

_“Fourth grade. He helped me find my pet turtle in the sandbox. We’ve been friends ever since.”_

“Is it true you two were more than just friends?”

_“. . . Yes.”_

“Were you two intimate with each other?”

_“I’m not sure what you mean. We were close, but if you mean…”_

“Sexually intimate.”

_“I-I mean, yea…”_

“Did Jean ever show signs of enjoyment in rougher sexual play?”

_“I don’t understand the question…”_

“Marco, did Jean seem to like rough sexual interactions?”

_“Not really…”_

“Can you expand on that?”

_“I mean, we were like anyone in bed, we liked to just mess around. Sometimes things were soft and sometimes they weren’t, but I wouldn’t say Jean preferred it one way or another.”_

“Did he enjoy the thrill of fights?”

_“W-what? No, I mean, Jean didn’t fight with people. Not psychically if that’s what you’re asking.”_

“So he in no way, to your knowledge, enjoyed pain?”

_“What the hell? N-no. No he didn’t. That’s not something I ever noticed. Why are you asking this? I’m confused.”_

“Did you know of anyone by the name of Eren Yaeger before Jean went missing?”

_“No.”_

“And Jean, to you knowledge, didn’t know anyone with that name?”

_“No.”_

“So he had no prior knowledge of Eren before the incident?”

_“Yes.”_

“Levi…” Erwin muttered under his breath. His hands were now placed at his mouth and he had a pensive look on his face. “I think this can work.”

“Isn’t it obvious? I told you it would work. All we need now is a medical diagnosis and were good to go.” Medical diagnosis? Why Erwin was asking about my sexual history with Jean and if he liked pain and why they now needed a medical diagnosis made no sense to me. I knew I would probably regret my next question, but I had to ask.

I looked at Erwin with concern written all over my face. He must have been able to tell I was worried about something because he just smiled and told me not to worry. But I was worrying. All I had been doing the past couple minutes was worry. I was held hostage to my own worry. I was back in fourth grade and fifteen minutes seemed like hours. Surely we had been sitting here longer than that.

“Sir…” I said, surprised at my own formality, “What are you talking about a medical diagnosis for?”

It wasn’t Erwin who responded. This time it was Levi, patronizing, but to the point.

“Is it really not obvious to you at this point, kid?” I didn’t appreciate him calling me kid, seeing as though he was probably only a couple years older than I was. My formality didn’t seem to stretch over to him. “You really can’t see what’s happening here?”

“No… I can’t.” I breathed. Levi smirked and leaned over to look me straight in the eyes. His eyes were a dead grey, but I could tell that doing this kind of work, getting to the bottom of a case like this, gave them some life. He was enjoying watching me freak the fuck out. He said his next words with a cheeky grin.

“Jean has a little thing called Stockholm Syndrome and that little thing is about to win us our case.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> marco would definitely have named his turtle shelley like let's be real. but anyway this chapter doesn't really have much action. it's definitely slow chapter, but you got some action in there with erwin and levi and omg erwin's character is going to be so great. i'm so excited. next chapter will have some jean. i promise.
> 
> also, if you guys want to talk to me about this fic the best place to go would be my tumblr: majorkimblee.tumblr.com
> 
> thank you for the love on the first chapter! you are all so amazing!!

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first fic and idk how to do these things so im just gonna run away... next chapter will be a lot about what jean and marco's relationship was!! this was just an intro to everything


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